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All Monsters Attack (1969)

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Overall Rating 39%
Overall Rating
Ranked #5,547
...out of 20,196 movies
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Connections: Godzilla

Ichiro is a highly imaginative, but lonely, boy growing up in urban Tokyo. Every day he comes home to the empty apartment he shares with his railroad worker father and his restaurant hostess mother. His only friends are a toy maker name Shinpei Inami and a little girl named Sachicko. The only other kids that are around is a gang of kids led by a bully named Gabara. To escape his loneliness, Ichiro imagines that he is on Monster Island where he befriends Minya, the son of Godzilla. It is through his daydreams that he watches Godzilla and Minya fight other monsters, including one also named Gabara who is just as bad a bully as the one that is tormenting Ichiro. It is through these daydreams that he learns that it is okay to fight back and face his fears. These lessons also help him to outwit a couple of bumbling bank robbers as well as finally have the guts to stand up to Gabara and his gang. --IMDb
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Review by Crispy
Added: May 14, 2014
Even though Toho went above and beyond to make the best Godzilla movie they could to wrap things up in Destroy All Monsters, they had a new sequel rolling out just one year later. I really wish they hadn't though.

Life isn't easy for young Ichiro. He's got no friends, his parents both work long hours just to make ends meet and he's tormented by a group of bullies led by one Sanko Gabara. Still, he trudges on the best he can, and he spends his time lost in a fantasy world. You see, he's completely obsessed with the kaiju of the world and Ichiro's favorite pass time is to conk out and dream about visiting Monster Island where he's befriended Godzilla's son, Minilla. It seems even the Prince of the Monsters has problems though,as he's also being bullied by a monster named Gabara. Godzilla is trying to get his son to stand up for himself, but Minilla continually runs and hides from the larger and stronger kaiju. Back in the real world, bullies are the least of anyone's worries however, because a pair of thieves are trying to get away with the fifty million yen they've recently stolen, and they've kidnapped Ichiro to use as a bargaining chip to facilitate their escape.

Before we even get into the movie itself, let's just point out the insane amount of stock footage from the previous movies that's used here. Pretty much anything on Monster Island that doesn't feature Gabara is from a previous movie, with Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster and Son of Godzilla providing the majority of the action scenes. Unfortunately, the two Godzilla costumes looked completely different in those two movies, and it's incredibly obvious when you're flip-flopping between the two. Plus, there's no rhyme or reason to any of it. We're in a child's dream after all, so it's just a bunch of fight scenes back to back with literally nothing tying them together. You can't even enjoy it as a Godzilla's Greatest Hits flick because they're all edited to shorten them to fit into the movie. Sloppily edited I might add. What a lazy way to squeeze some blood from the stone.

In case you hadn't figured it out for yourself, this movie is unabashedly aimed at children. Yeah sure, the franchise was pretty much always aimed at a younger demographic, but this is a whole different level. I mean, just look at that plot synopsis. We used to have amnesiac princesses, nuclear terrorists, and invading aliens. Now we've got a loser kid with an overactive imagination. From the moment we see Ichiro running from bullies over and over, we just know that he's going to have some big moment where he rises up and knock the bully out. Fair enough, I can handle that. But two grown adults? That's a bit hard to swallow. Plus, even in the dream world, Minilla isn't done any favors either. Not only is he voiced by a girl for some reason (it's son of Godzilla guys), but the voice sounds incredibly tinny, like she recorded her lines over the phone. That's one thing the English dub got right. Sure, they gave him a dopey voice, but at least it was male and again, it fit the childish tone of the film. Of course, they also renamed it Godzilla's Revenge; I don't think they could have picked a more irrelevant title if they tried.

Begrudgingly, I do have to admit that all of those complaints actually work together to do just what Toho wanted. I mean, given your average five year old has the attention span of a goldfish, it's probably torture for them having to wait until Godzilla got down and dirty at the end of the movies. Here, they just slam the fights one after another all throughout the running time. I'm sure they loved it. With that said, I'm not sure what to take away from Ichiro's side of the story. After his dreams teach him to grow some balls, he apparently becomes a punk and befriends the group that's been bullying him the entire movie. I'm normally not one to go "what are we teaching our children?!" Hell, I felt Sanko deserved an ass kicking, and good on Ichiro for delivering, but I guess he becomes a bully himself now? It was just a weird decision to make.

All Monsters Attack is on my DVD shelf simply because it came in a box set with some other Godzilla movies I didn't have. Otherwise, I'd have forgotten about it as soon as this review was finished. 2/10, but again, if you're about eight years old or so, go ahead and add another four points to that score.
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